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The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA) has become the first of India’s elite business schools to appoint a director with substantial international experience. Ashish Nanda, a former IIMA alumnus and currently faculty director of executive education at Harvard Law School, will become director of the Indian business school on September 2.

The appointment comes amid concerns that the IIM’s - India’s equivalent to the Ivy League business schools in the US - have been slow to attract non-Indian students and appoint international faculty. Prof Nanda, who graduated from IIMA in 1983, went on to earn a masters degree and PhD from Harvard University and has taught courses at Harvard Business School as well as Harvard Law School.

IIMA was established in 1961 and since then has earned itself the reputation of being India’s leading business school, training the boardrooms of India. In addition to its flagship Post-Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) - a pre-experience degree equivalent to a masters in management programme in Europe - the school also teaches a highly-ranked Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX), the equivalent of a one-year MBA programme.